Service for March 30 Fourth Sunday of Lent

Sermon for March 30, 2025 Fourth Sunday of Lent

In our gospel reading today Jesus is teaching people very much like us. This is such a familiar reading, there is a danger we won’t hear the depth of it’s meaning for us. So, I’d like us to shift gears a bit. We all learn differently but maybe try listening to the reading in a new way. If you usually read along, try listening with your eyes closed, just hearing the words instead of seeing them. Relax, take a deep breath. Prepare your heart and your spirit to hear these words as if for the first time.

As you listen, I’d like you to listen closely for 3 things. First, listen to what Jesus says to the people he is speaking directly to. These are the people who come with open hearts to listen and learn. They’re the people on the margins; those for whom life is hard. Our gospel reading calls them “tax collectors and sinners.” But, really, they’re just regular people doing their best in a hard world.

According to the religious authorities, they were “really bad people.” At least they were really bad in the eyes of the people with power, and money, and privilege. Maybe it would help us understand them to reframe that description as “those people with nothing to lose.” Those people who were desperate and hopeless and so they came to Jesus with open hearts read to listen and learn.

So, we’ll call them, the “so-called really, bad people.” Listen for what Jesus’ words sound like if you’re one of them.

Secondly, listen for the people on the sidelines who hear what Jesus is saying to those “so-called really bad people.” They are the religious authorities, Pharisees and Scribes who are keeping their distance from Jesus, but taking it all in. They were religious but not necessarily faithful. They may have kept all the rules, maintained the traditions of the church but for some reason, maybe their status or security, something made them feel threatened by Jesus’ words and so they could not hear good news in what Jesus was saying.

We’ll call them the “really religious people.” Listen for what Jesus’ words sound like if you’re one of those “really religious people.”

Lastly, listen for Jesus’ message of hope at the end.

Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32 Now all the tax collectors and sinners (the “so-called really bad people”) were coming near to listen to [Jesus] him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes (the “really religious people”) were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 So [Jesus] he told them this parable: 11 “There was a man who had two sons. …The Gospel of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Ok, we were listening for 3 things. First, who Jesus was speaking directly to: the “so-called really bad people.”

It might help us make sense of why Jesus is telling this particular story at this time to these people, to notice that there are missing verses in our reading today. What we missed were two familiar parables: the parable of the lost coin and the parable of the lost sheep.

Jesus told those parables, speaking directly to those so-called “really bad people”, those people we’ve identified as the desperate, the hopeless, the powerless.

Those parables were meant to give those people hope. To reassure them that God would stop at nothing to gather them in, to claim them and to bring them into God’s family, loving and caring for them. Those parables told them that they were part of God’s family and would never be left behind, despite what the really religious people said.

Immediately after those two parables, Jesus tells this story, the story we know as the story of the prodigal son. Those first two stories of being lost, were told to the hopeless, the so-called “really bad people.” But this story of the prodigal son is told directly to the second group I asked you to listen for; those standing on the sidelines, those watching and judging; the “really religious people;” the rule followers and tradition keepers; those with power and privilege.

Jesus’ message was meant to provoke them out of their complacency, out of their comfort, judging Jesus for the company he kept, rather than opening their hearts to his message. Jesus was holding a mirror up for them to see themselves in the older brother.

The really religious people could not imagine that God’s grace could be free. They could only imagine that being “good” or “right” or “following the rules” would earn them a place in God’s kingdom; earn them God’s priceless love!

The really religious people respond with anger to the idea of God’s love being unconditional for everyone – no exceptions. They lash out like the older son, recalling a litany of his brother’s mistakes and all the reasons he did not deserve to be welcomed home by their father.

Two brothers. Two experiences of life in the same world. The so-called “really bad people”, the ones we see in the younger son, the one who ran away; they experience all the sadness this life can offer: exclusion, poverty, oppression and they respond by surviving however they can. They do whatever it takes to survive: they engage in professions that are seen by the “really religious” as disgraceful, but it puts food on the table. Their families survive to try again tomorrow. They may have to steal or game the system for their children to survive. Jesus’ message of God’s unconditional love is music to their ears: God loves them. God sees them. God knows them – not for what they’ve been forced to do to survive but for their humanity. God loves them and welcomes them simply for being human. God walks with them in their desperation.

The “really religious people” hear Jesus’ words and condemn him. From their position, from their comfort and privilege, Jesus’ acceptance of those so-called ‘sinners’ is threatening. If Jesus is right and God’s love is not earned but freely given, well, that means that all their work to protect their positions and the religion; all their rule-keeping and tradition-maintaining are meaningless. If Jesus is right, they’re no better than the so-called ‘sinners.’

Those “very religious people” will, ultimately conspire with the Roman government to bring Jesus down. They would rather kill him than have their position, and privilege, and the tradition questioned.

In reality, like all of Jesus’ parables, it’s complicated. It’s complicated and these neat categories I’ve set out for you are, of course, false. Nothing is that cut and dried. We all carry within us aspects of the younger son and the older one. Every one of us has made mistakes. Every one of us has tried to do the right thing. We’re all a mashup of good and evil. That’s what it means to be human!

Remember I asked you to listen for three things. The third thing was the hope Jesus offered at the end of the parable. Did you hear that?

It’s when the father says to the older son, the jealous “good” son, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice! Because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” That is the hope we need. That’s the good news we all need to hear!

We have to celebrate because “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

We have to celebrate because since we’re all both sons. Because we carry the capacity for both good and evil, God’s grace embraces us all!

The father has love and room and plenty for all: for the “so-called, really bad people” and for the “really religious people”. God’s love holds us when we’re bad and when we’re good.

There is a feast to share. There is plenty for everyone. The lost are no different than those who never strayed to begin with. We are all one family. Of course, the father welcomes us all. There is no distinction in the Father’s eyes. God doesn’t expect perfection. God invites us to the feast. God invites us into relationship.

At the feast which is God’s desire for all of humanity, a table is set with true forgiveness and equality, a place of genuine love, a table “where everyone is seated and sated,”1 welcomed and fed.

That is true. That is reality. That is how God has ordered all of creation. We who cannot admit our need for God; we who cannot let go of our privilege; we are the ones who keep ourselves separated from all that God longs for us. God, waits for us watching, hoping that we too will return, we too will join in the feast of the universe.

Truly, each of us has been at one time or another the younger son who strayed. We turned our backs on God’s love intentionally or unintentionally. We hardened our hearts toward God and toward those who hold a special place in God’s heart because the world despises them so: the marginalized, the vulnerable, the weak. When we refuse to join them at the feast or welcome them into our table, we are refusing the Father as well. Jesus is telling us that any distance we perceive between ourselves, and God is self-imposed. We have separated ourselves and our dear Father waits, watching for any sign of our return so that he may run out and meet us and love us, not even waiting to hear our confession, not expecting perfection but rejoicing simply in our humanity.

In all these stories the result of finding the “lost” is joy, rejoicing, the exuberance of having the lost restored. The return of the lost is important! The return of what was lost means all other concerns must be put aside. It is cause for celebration! In God’s world a party is the only appropriate response to the return of whatever (or whoever) was lost!

That is the party you are invited to today, at the table of grace where Jesus is host and welcomes you and everyone to experience God’s unconditional love! Amen.

Pastor Val Metropoulos